The Dolomite as a Capri killer

The Ford Capri is widely regarded as one of the finest saloon cars of the 1970s. Indeed, Autosport placed it second in our greatest British Touring Car list last year. After the hitherto dominant American V8s had been banished at the end of 1975, the Capri became the car to have, taking 61 overall victories before the Rover SD1 took control from 1982.

But the popular coupe wasn’t unbeatable. As well as its drivers repeatedly and famously losing the overall crown to battlers in the smaller classes (who could score the same number of points within their own categories), the Capri found the going tough against one smaller-engined car in 1977.

Broadspeed-run and developed Triumph Dolomite Sprints had already scored plenty of successes, including the overall title for Andy Rouse in 1975, but their outright race victories had been restricted to the days when the smaller-capacity cars were split from the bigger machines.

In 1977, however, the combination of the Dolomite and Tony Dron stepped things up a notch. “The 1977 Dolomite Sprint felt vastly better than the model I had raced for the team back in 1974 and it was obviously very much quicker,” recalls Dron, who got the drive in the one-car team by winning a shootout at Goodwood.

“Over the previous three years, it had benefited from a great deal of development and homologated parts, all of which made it faster and stronger. There was a lot more power, about 200bhp in early 1977, and it had ventilated front disc brakes and a close-ratio four-speed gearbox. The handling had been developed by Andy Rouse, Broadspeed’s in-house ace driver and engineer, and the car he had produced was excellent. The fact that our driving styles were quite different did not matter a bit.”

Broadspeed boss Ralph Broad and Dron agreed that overall wins should be the target, even though the Dolomite ‘only’ had to top the